That night, the fighting started much as it always did. The defenders arranged themselves a hundred yards from the mouth of the Maw. It was a cave of sorts, with an opening wide enough to drive a cart through, but which seemed to absorb every ray of light, forming an inky-black veil. The stone around the opening was gnarled and hideous, ravaged by the passing of innumerable twisted hands and stained by blood and bile and the viscous black ichor that filled the veins of dregs and clickers.

Footmen arranged themselves in their usual, crescent ranks. Armed with a range of weapons, they stood shoulder to shoulder, four deep. Behind them was a unit of archers, their arrows dipped in pitch. A dozen open-faced lanterns were set among them, ready to light each volley. 

Leuh stood with Kax Orell on their left flank, with a lantern of their own and two dozen saltbombs. She’d traded her tattered uniform for a long jacket of iron-banded leather. In place of her spectacles, she wore old, weathered goggles with lenses so thick they magnified her eyes. Kax always said they made her look like an imp, but at least she could see. One didn’t fight the Swarm half-blind.

She glanced to where Commander Amdon stood, in what had already become his usual position. He had traded his immaculate uniform for equally immaculate armour. It was simple enough—light chainmail beneath a breastplate wrought with a lion to match his sword. Steel spaulders covered each shoulder, and a pair of greaves protected his impossibly clean boots. Every piece of metal was so polished that it seemed to gleam even in the last rays of the dying light. 

His eyes fixed on the sun as it sunk behind the island’s western crags.

“Ready!” he bellowed, as though the men needed any reminder of the nightmare they were about to face. 

Still, there was a collective creak as men shifted in response to the command. Leuh met Kax’s eye. They nodded to each other, a motion synchronized through years of mutual struggle, and prepared to light the wicks of their saltbombs. There was a brief moment of stillness when the last sliver of the sun faded from view. 

Then the Maw exploded, spewing forth the Swarm like a stream of living bile.

Dregs and clickers poured from the blackness. They came shrieking and hissing and buzzing, a terrible cacophony of inhuman sound that always left Leuh with the impression of nails piercing her ears. The dregs were vaguely man-shaped, with powerful legs and long, spindly arms that were far stronger than they appeared. Scaly hide covered their bodies, ranging from deepest indigo to dark, magmatic red. The clickers were something different. They shared the same scaly hide, but had conical heads, sagging apish faces, and overgrown pincers in place of hands.

Leuh hurled her first saltbomb. Kax’s was only a second behind. Both landed short of the closing swarm, exploding with a flash of flame so bright that it slowed the rush by a step. It was just long enough for a volley of blazing arrows to fall. In an instant, dozens of the monsters went down, hissing as they died. But for every one that fell, another two or three emerged from the Maw. The two Flameborn each hurled another bomb before the swarm crashed into the front lines.

It broke like a wave over a rocky shore.

The line held. One rush wasn’t enough to break them.

Steel and iron flashed in evening’s residual light, weapons tearing through skin and hide, dismembering the enemy and leaving them hissing and dying where they fell. Volley after volley of arrows flew, a rain of death and fire that decimated the Swarm in a dozen places. Saltbombs blew momentary holes in the mass of bodies, but there were always more monsters to fill the gaps. Blood and ichor flowed freely: the wine of furious battle.

The defenders threw back the swarm’s first wave. Those who fell were hauled back behind the lines, which closed ever tighter, preparing for the second wave. It came with such force that the front lines cracked. Dregs and clickers filled the gaps, pushing forward with teeth and claws and relentless fury.

“Shift rank!” Commander Amdon’s voice boomed. The defenders reacted instantly, forming small pockets of soldiers. Standing back to back, they cut down anything that approached. Soon there were dozens of small islands in a sea of hissing bodies. 

Standing several yards from the thick of the battle, Leuh drew her weapons, a pair of fearsome knives specifically chosen for their ability to tear through scale and hide. Beside her, Kax raised his hulking mace, its spikes glowing bright with power. Without even a sidelong glance at each other, they surged forward and tore into the Swarm with the practised efficiency of countless similar battles. Kax’s mace crushed twisted bodies to black pulp. Others fell to the occasional blasts of red fire that he managed to summon—though anything more would have exhausted his Soulblaze, leaving him a shivering mess and unable to defend himself.

Flaring her own magic, Leuh tore into the Swarm with a strength that belied her small frame. Her muscles were charged with unnatural strength, allowing her knives to strike with nearly as much force as Kax’s mace. She hacked through scale and hide, tearing limbs from the closest dregs or driving her blades into their eyes. Ichor flew, forcing her to wipe the liquid from her goggles between death strikes. One clicker nearly caught her throat in its pincers. Leuh drove her blade straight up, tearing through its jaw and up into its skull. The pincers fell away but left thick scratches along her skin.

She shoved the creature back, providing the briefest of respites: just long enough to glance at Kax and ensure that he was still at her side. Finding him exactly where she expected him to be, she returned her attention to the fighting, gutting another dreg with practiced efficiency.

The battle raged on. 

Minutes dragged into hours, and the dimness of dusk gave way to the full darkness of night. Still, Leuh fought on, driven by the power of her Soulblaze. Corpses littered the ground around her. Most were the twisted bodies of the enemy, but there were men there, too. With every glimpse of a familiar face, Leuh turned away, dispatching another enemy with the fury of her vengeance.

She was just tearing one of her knives from the body of a particularly vile dreg when the cry went up.

“Gohrm!”

Leuh turned toward the Maw just in time to see the monster drag itself out of the darkness. In appearance, it was nearly identical to its dreg brethren, with three noticeable differences. The first was that its scaly hide was thicker and covered in thorns across its shoulders and arms. The second was the eight eyes arranged around its jutting nose.

And the third was that it towered over the battle, more than twice the height of a man—and far more in comparison to Leuh.  

“Pissing, bloody hells!” cursed Kax.

“Should’ve been expecting it,” muttered Leuh. “It’s been too long since one of those things crawled out of that hole.” Gohrms were rare. In her three years of fighting in the Maw, Leuh had seen exactly ten. They were big, strong and fast, but no more intelligent than the rest of the Swarm. They were dangerous, but not invincible. 

“What do we do?” stammered a nearby man, struggling to dislodge himself from a dying clicker. His youthful face was as pale as it was unfamiliar. 

One of the recruits, thought Leuh.

“What do you think, man?” she snapped. “We bring it down.”

“Same strategy as always?” asked Kax.

Leuh shrugged. “No sense getting creative now.”

Kax rushed forward, scattering bodies with his mace and the fury of his battle cry. The defenders fell back. Those who’d lived through the last gohrm attack could guess at what was happening, while those who had not merely retreated at the sight of the big Flameborn warrior and the shattering force of his mace. Dregs and clickers scattered as well, driven aside by Kax’s attacks or pulled down by nearby soldiers. 

Leuh was right behind him, running in his shadow and preparing herself for what was coming. She drew all the strength she could safely muster from her Soulblaze, turning her knives in her hands so that she felt the flats of the ichor-drenched blades against her forearms. 

Finally, they broke free of the swarm. Kax roared, raising his mace and smashing the earth with one mighty blow. The ground shook, and fresh cracks snaked out from the point of impact. The gohrm stumbled. The force of the strike brought Kax to one knee. 

Exactly as planned.

Leuh raced up his back, planted herself on his broad shoulders, and leaped into the air. The Flameborn strength of her legs sent her soaring upward, coming face to face with the gohrm. Her knives flashed, biting hard and deep into the creature’s shoulders, splashing fresh ichor across her face. The gohrm hissed and clicked, writhing and twisting in pain. Planting her feet on its chest, Leuh set her shoulders and twisted. One knife came free. Then it fell again and sliced clean through the creature’s throat. 

The gohrm staggered. Leuh jumped free. She filled her body with one last surge from her Soulblaze, fortifying herself against the impact of her landing. She hit the ground like a stone, landing directly between two broken corpses, and found herself looking out over the raging battle. Her eyes fell on Kax. He was yelling something, but his voice was lost in the din of the fighting. He smashed an attacking clicker to one side then pointed with his mace.

It was too late.

Leuh never saw the second gohrm; she definitely felt it. The monster struck her with a single blow that sent her flying. The world twisted around her until her flight was arrested by a stone outcropping. The impact drove the breath from her lungs. As she tumbled to the ground, the back of her head struck hard against rock. There was a loud crack, followed by a searing pain in her face. Blood fell in streams of crimson, letting her know that she was hurt. Hurt badly. Still, she started to rise. Stopping now meant certain death.

Rolling to one side, she tried pushing herself to her feet; but collapsed in a whirlwind of vertigo. A small cry escaped her lips. Somewhere above her, black shadows closed in.

So this is how the Last Wind finds me.

There was a flash, followed by the ring of steel. The shadows fell back. A new figure appeared among them, twisting and crying in battle rage. All around her, voices were shouting as creatures of the Swarm hissed and clicked and died. Then there was another sound, a deep rumbling roar, followed by a blur of golden light.

Leah’s vision cleared just long enough to see Commander Amdon standing over her, his sword wet and black. In the fog of her crumbling awareness, she thought she saw a shimmering lion standing at his side. Then her eyes closed, and she fell into darkness.